It's the end of the year, but before we get too excited about what's to come next, lets take a breather, let those mince pies break down and glance back at 2011.

In the big wide world, June saw the strange death of Jackass's Ryan Dunn and the legend that was Peter Falk but nothing so tragic, fortunately, in the world of technology. So what was going on in Pocket-lint's pages?

MacBook thief caught by app

Joshua Kaufman began a blog when his beloved MacBook was stolen from him posting photos of his computer's new owner in all sorts of situations and positions all thanks to an app called Hidden. Eventually Oakland police caught onto the website and managed to catch the criminal. And return the laptop to Joshua too. Read more

It's right here, ray

Sony Ericsson announces the high end but compact Xperia ray smartphone with an 8.1-megapixel camera, Bravia Engine and Reality Display all packed inside a 100g chassis with a 3.3-inch screen. In fact, it turned out so tidy that it made Pocket-lint's best five mobile phones of the year. Read more

Mitsubishi go super-wide

Further proof that East Asia is both completely nuts and yet far in advance of anything we can dream up in the West was once more served up as Mitsubishi Electronics showed of a 16:3 aspect, wall-mounted display for showing off your panoramic shots. Of course. Read more

iPope

"Dear Friends, I just launched News.Va. Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI". So read the very first tweet from the Pope on his iPad, no less, to mark the launch of the Vatican's multimedia website. Religion 2.0. Read more

LG mystery phone

While T-Mobile was showing off its wares to come at an event in London, Pocket-lint spied a rather unique looking device that no one ever seemed to get quite to the bottom of. Not seen since, was this an American exclusive? Was it the LG Flip II, the LG Maxx Q, or possibly even the LG Q or LG Optimus Slider? We never found out, but that second touchscreen in the middle of the keyboard was certainly very interesting. Read more

Korea goes future shopping

Tesco in Korea decide to treat locals to a taste of shopping in the 21st century by pasting the walls of the subway with flat representations of supermarket shopping shelves. All customers needed to do was use the QR codes to select which goods they wanted and it was delivered to them just after they got home. Read more

Google takes on Facebook

What started as a fairly innocent redesign in early June 2011 turned out to be the first sparks of a full explosion for Google in what has become the company's take on social networking - Google+. While not everyone was able to access the service until September, Pocket-lint certainly managed to scope the new Facebook rival's pages and at least explain what Google+ actually is to those that were not privy. Read more

Apple in 'big trouble'

Technology editor at NBC's Today Show Paul Hochman told all those gathered at the inaugural Forward with Ford Futuring and Trends Conference in Dearborn, USA, that, despite Apple's huge success, that it was in "big trouble" because of its closed system way of operating. Cue much commenting. Read more

Brush with the future

When we went hands-on with the Nokia N9 back in June 2011, little did the world realise that we were looking at the very same slick chassis that would later be boasting Windows Phone 7 rather the MeeGo no-go OS that didn't proved so popular. Read more

Daleks for sale

The online Aladdin's cave of amusements and geekery that is Firebox quite often comes up with some pretty interesting high ticket items for the masses to have a giggle at and for the few to actually buy. All the same, we couldn't fail to be impressed when it began selling full size Daleks for £3,000. Read more

E3 games show takes place in LA

The gaming world came together in its annual look at what's to come in the shape of top titles, word from the three console giants and a fair few interesting accessories like this blacked out gas mask used to create that little bit more tension when trying to find an underwater monster in the game Deep Sea. Read the story and read more of Pocket-lint's E3 2011 coverage

€4,700 Android phone

That's what Tag Heuer decided to charge for the croc-clad handsets launched in June 2011 - and they didn't even run Gingerbread! Still, at least we could be thankful for the 5-megapixel camera and 3.5-inch screen - oh, and the label, of course. Read more

Fastest printer in the...East?

Printers may not be that exciting but LG and Memjet managed to spice things up a little in June when they created the world's fastest printer that managed to print at half the cost as well as twice the speed of its nearest rival. Read more

Google noodle

Google saluted what would have been the 96th birthday of guitar legend Les Paul by coming up with probably the best Google Doodle since the Pac-man one. The playable guitar logo spawned all sorts of fan versions and videos of people playing well known tunes with everything from the Star Wars theme to the Star Spangled Banner. It's still up there if you want to have a go. Read more

Gillette shaves giant Federer

It's debatable as to whether it was clever but Gillette's June viral campaign was certainly big. Taking one of its sports star personalities, the company decided to manicure a piece of English countryside to look like Roger Federer's face from the air. The next trick was to cover its chin with 1,000 litres of foam and shave it with a mower. Read More

iOS follows suit

Apple turned the tables on the norm at its WWDC event in June 2011 when it announced and detailed the next version of its mobile and tablet software to come later in the year. iOS 5 pleased Android and iPhone users alike by adding touches like the Notifications Center and free chat service iMessage. RIM might not have been too happy. Read more

You know, for kids

LeapFrog showed that all this tablet business didn't have to be for grown ups when it launched both the LeapPad computer slate and a version of the Kindle called the My Own Story Time Pad too. As ever, Pocket-lint was on hand to snap some shot. Read more

Streaming revolution rolls on

Marantz became the latest high end audio brand to embrace digital music when it released two AirPlay compatible, MP3 enhancing AV receivers complete with USB port and an HDMI too. Read more

How Mario was created

The people over at Dorkly.com came up with a much better version of how Mario came into existence in a spoof video they created showing a meeting between the 8-bit Italian and his agent. Given the chance, we'd probably stomp on a turtle too. Read more

Mango Landing

Windows Phone 7 took its second sally to the mobile market in the shape of the fruity sounding update called Mango. We first got our hands-on of the software to be launched later in the Autumn and brought you the details of what those changes would look like nice and early, like. Read more